


A Man on Fire

by DjDangerLove



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst, Booker is Not a Villain, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Protective Nicky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:53:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25577620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DjDangerLove/pseuds/DjDangerLove
Summary: Joe just wants to figure out how to forgive Booker. Nicky helps him find the starting point.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 26
Kudos: 318





	A Man on Fire

**Author's Note:**

> There's not enough of Vulnerable Joe / Protective Nicky out there yet so I'm just giving it a go.

The coming rain feels heavy in the morning air.

Clouds billow from the west, churning with rumbles of thunder back behind the stretch of hillside their current safe house is nestled in. The humidity pouring off the incoming storm is thick and it presses down on Nicky like he can feel the gravitational pull holding him down to the Earth. 

It would be unbearable if it didn’t feel like it was the only thing keeping him steady as he treks across the field, boots sliding in mud puddles from a previous rain. A crack of thunder, arriving sooner than expected, shakes the air and he picks up his pace with a sigh. 

Joe had said he’d be back from his morning run before the storm blew in, but thirty minutes of dark clouds hanging over the house was as long as Nicky could wait given Joe’s propensity to find trouble in the most mundane things and his sullen behavior as of late. 

It was the latter that had him hurrying out the door with a quick assurance to Nile and Andy and sans raincoat. It’s also why he’s currently slipping in mud as he crests the top of the biggest hill on their acreage to find Joe standing at the base looking out over the rest of the land. A bolt of lighting races across the sky, still miles out, but the thunder rolls through the ground at their feet.

Nicky begins the slow process of plodding down the hill so as not to slip in the mud, purposefully making his efforts louder than necessary so as not to startle the man in front of him. He slides into place beside the man he’s spent near a millennium with, shoulders inches from brushing against each other but minds miles apart. 

Nicky looks to the clouds, swelled out with rain and stirring with intensity. He’s never been one to wax poetic, but storm clouds have always reminded him of Yusuf. Larger than life itself and carrying an almost chaotic energy if you don’t truly understand their nature, Joe can be as loud as thunder, but shower those around him with affection the way clouds dump rain on dry grass. He’s gentle like the breeze on the front end of a storm and constant like clear skies after it, but standing next to him now, Nicky can see he’s nothing like what lies on the horizon. 

Lightning dances in between the clouds, the movement a stark contrast to the stillness in which Joe stands under a sheet of rain. Nicky turns to him, desperate to see him behind the veil of a heavy downpour and a stoic face. 

_“Where is your head at, my love?”_ Nicky asks in Arabic, itching to reach for Joe but not willing to intrude with more than an inquiry.

Joe’s chest rises with a deep breath, falls slower than the clouds ghosting across the sky and the sound of it settles on the backs of raindrops plopping into mud puddles. “Do you…” he says, but his voice is quiet. Too quiet. He swallows and wipes beads of water from the ends of his hair plastered to his forehead. “Do you think the lightning feels like fire against your skin or would it be too quick to feel?”

Nicky is thankful for the roar of thunder shaking the air around them for it hides his sudden gasp of breath. “Why do you ask such a thing?”

Joe lets his gaze fall from the horizon with the downturn of his head. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’d never been burnt alive before.”

Like a cruel taunt, lightning ignites in the clouds, closer than before, and it strikes an irrational fear in Nicky that it may suddenly claim the man before him for the few seconds, minutes it possibly could. He reaches for Joe, rain slicked fingers sliding down his arm until the man shifts out from underneath them. 

Nicky reaches for him again, undeterred by the way Joe tries to hide behind the rain falling between them, and grasps his wrist. “What do you mean before? Before when?”

“Before a week ago…when those men threw a Molotov cocktail at my face on Copley’s latest job.”

“Hayati,” Nicky whispers, his voice lost to a grief he hadn't known he should feel. He moves to stand in between the incoming storm and his love, to stand in front of him and brace his tear stained face hiding in the rain with his hands. He runs his thumbs across cheekbones and smooths unblemished skin, kisses the trail his fingers leave knowing he would still do so if it were scarred. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Nicky feels the quiver of Joe’s jaw in the palm of his hands, ignores it the way Joe wants him to when he says, “It was healed by the time I caught up with the rest of you. It didn’t seem to matter anymore.”

The storm flickers in the sky, a natural reaction to being imbalanced, and Nicky feels the way Joe does the same by flinching at the flash. 

“I don't think it is healed at all,” Nicky says and is unprepared for the way Joe falls from between his hands as if to prove his point. Joe ends up knees down in the mud, body swaying dangerously until Nicky follows suit and takes his weight against his chest. “Riposa su di me, mi amor.” 

Joe shakes against him with an emotion that has been brewing for days, mind and heart existing with so much polarity he’s finally coming apart like unstable storm clouds. Nicky tucks the man’s face in the crook of his neck, shields his eyes with his chin so that the rain can no longer mask his tears. 

“Why do you cry, habibi?”

Joe finally moves, only enough to grasp at the soaked cotton at Nicky’s sides. “To burn, Nicky, is to feel everything you think you deserve. Slow enough that you want to repent, but too painful to be anything other than selfish just to put out the flames.”

“You deserve nothing of that kind of pain,” Nicky promises in his native tongue. His fingers smooth back flattened curls behind Joe’s ear. “What makes you believe it?”

“I needed to feel it,” Joe whispers before uncurling himself from Nicky and bearing the weight on his shoulders for himself. He braces his hands against his knees still in the mud and squints against the pouring rain. “I needed to understand the kind of pain that makes a man betray his family in order to find forgiveness.”

“Yusuf, you search for it in the wrong places.”

“In fire, I felt what it would be like to live just one lifetime without you.” Joe counters with a shake of his head, sending raindrops back into the fray. “Imagining hundreds more is a place I cannot go, but Booker…he lived there for so long, a man on fire, desperate for someone to put out the flames he never could and we never did. ”

“You showed him all the love in your heart unreserved for me. I know this to be true just as I know that it is in your heart where you must find your forgiveness,” Nicky says as he reaches out for Joe once more and curls around him. He kisses the crown of his head, unbothered by his doused hair and tucks him close. “That is where he hurt you the most, mi amor, but you are not a man on fire.”

Joe’s fingers tighten at the soaked cotton of Nicky’s t-shirt, his shoulders shaking with the thunder rolling overhead. Nicky kisses shushes into Joe’s hair and does his best to shield Joe from the brunt of pelting raindrops, because the rain feels heavy in the morning air and Nicky will never let Joe carry a weight that is not his to bear.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!! Let me know what you think then come yell at me about The Old Guard on Tumblr at DjDangerLove.


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